michael879 said:
there's nothing wrong with the question. Its simply does an observer entangle with the observed state. The observer could be a photon or w/e, it doesn't have to be a macroscopic object.
how can you say the double slit experiment with electrons DOESNT prove that a particle can interfere with itself? Unless your just being a pain and trying to say that experimental evidence is different from a proof, I don't understand what you mean by that.
Clearly you need a paradigm shift to be able to see what I'm talking about. And when you do see it, you will understand why most of the things you are posting here make no sense at all. Let me try to illustrate to you the difference between ontological statements and epistemological statements.
Imagine I call you up on the phone and tell you I have a coin in my hand and I'm going to toss it. Then I toss it. You actually hear as the coin drops and settles to a stop. Then I ask you, what is the outcome, heads or tails? What will you say. The correct answer will be to say you don't know, which is exactly the same thing but more precise to say that there is a 0.5 probability that the outcome is heads and 0.5 probability that the outcome is tails.
If you say it is "both heads and tails", or "neither heads no tails", I would think you are just being stupid because I look down and see clearly the state of the coin. This clearly tells you that there is a difference between epistemological statements and ontological ones. For the person who has observed the outcome, their observation is an ontological statement. For the person who is yet to observe the outcome, their statement is epistemological.
- epistemological: the probability of the outcome being a "head" is 0.5
- ontological: the outcome IS a "head", or the probability of the outcome being a "head" is 1.0
As you see, the two statements appear to contradict each other but they are both correct in their contexts. It would be wrong for a person who has not observed the outcome and thus is making an epistemological statement, to suggest without any extra information that the probability for "head" is 1.0, even though ontologically that is the correct answer. Therefore, it is nonsensical to interpret a statement that was made epistemologically in an ontological manner.
Every time somebody says the "the coin IS in a superposition of head and tails" that is what they are doing. It makes absolutely no difference whether you are talking about macroscopic objects, or photons and electrons. Every time a person uses wavefunction collapse as a real physical process happening at observation, that is, with the unstated assumption that something is actually happening to the coin or photon when it is observed, they commit the same error. Everytime somebody says there are two universes such that in one the coin is heads and the other is tails, commits this error.
This is so fundamental, I dare say your future as a scientist (as opposed to a phenomenologist) hangs on you understanding this difference.
Also, Ill admit I didn't read the papers you posted (havnt had time). However that other guy posted saying those papers have been refuted:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/23/14632
(I havnt read that either).
You've got the sequence wrong.
In the first paper, the authors showed that Bell's theorem was inaccurate.
In the second paper, the authors attempted a rebuttal to the first paper.
In the third paper, the original authors showed that the rebuttal in the second paper was based on fautly mathematics and reiterated more clearly their position showing exactly where the second paper's authors as well as Bell himself were wrong.
It's been 4 years, since and nobody has attempted a response to the third paper, not even the authors of the second paper.
Also, how can you equate believing in a generally accepted scientific theory to religion?
Because it is not scientific and is mostly vain speculation.
I know that scientists accept these theories, and I know that scientists require proof (or experiment evidence). Its also ridiculous to expect someone to verify every single theory they read about.
You should read some physics history. There are a lot of things that are commonly accepted but are unscientific. Unfortunately, you have to read the articles and be convinced by them rather than accept the claims at face value.
Other than the simple experiments they teach in school, I don't have time to try to reprove quantum mechanics (if I had time Id do it).
You don't have to, there are many renowned scientists that have successfully challenged some of these commonly accepted dogma. You don't have to accept their claims at face value. You have to read it for yourself.
I've read enough about it to believe its "true" (like you said its a mathematical model it doesn't explain what's actually going on). However as far as a particle interfering with itself, I don't see how any other conclusion can be drawn from observing an interference pattern when sending single electrons through a double slit.
The mathematical system of "
epicycles" was developed 1000s of years ago to explain the motion of the planets and the solar system. It appeared to work, some people like Galileo, Kepler, Corpernicus challenged it, and many thought they were crazy for rejecting a commonly accepted theory. It turns out they were right.
QM and QED are analogous to epicycles. They are mathematical tools that appear to work but are far from describing what actually happens. The sooner you realize this the sooner you can put your mental effort to an attempt at developing something better.
As far as concerns an electron interfering with itself, you claim that sending electrons through a slit system one at a time and obtaining a pattern means the electron interferes with itself? It doesn't, a single electron produces a single spec on the screen not a diffraction pattern. The ensemble of electrons passing through the slits, produce the diffraction pattern. The only thing this experiment proves is that the slits sort out the ensemble of electrons passing through them into a pattern. It says nothing about the mechanism of the sorting although it is evident that the sorting is based on a property of the electrons themselves. There is no evidence of any "interference".
Let us know when you've got a better theory, we'll be all ears. Remember that the reason we no longer believe in epicycles is the existence of hard experimental data which agreed better with Kepler's description than it did with any epicycle theory of comparable complexity (plus Newton and Einstein correctly predicted new phenomena that would not otherwise have been expected). So far all you have is a small controversy (over which particular classes of theory have been proven unworkable) not a working alternative to the complete mainstream theory.